


The Busker.

by BarPurple



Series: Sherlolly Against the World [24]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Emotional, F/M, First Kiss, John is a Saint, Pre series first meeting, Sherlock Plays the Violin, ambiguous injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5404628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarPurple/pseuds/BarPurple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were coming together with painful slowness. Just like they always had done thought Molly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Busker.

The busker was there again. Violinists playing in the Underground weren’t unusual, but this one, this tall thin mop haired man was different. She’d see him on the way to work every day for the past six months, bowing familiar tunes and tipping his head in thanks as coins fell into the case laid open at his feet. He was good; he was great in fact, tourists and locals alike smiled at the melodies he played.

She didn’t care about his morning performances, or even think much about him during the long hours at work. It was his late night playing she wanted to hear. 

The last tube rattled along the tracks and into the dark of the tunnels. She listened and heard the sweet strains of music drifting through the empty station. It was soft and gentle, filled with longing. The sound never failed to break her heart and bring a tear to her eye. As she rounded the bend her violinist came into view. Late at night he was her violinist, she was the only person in the station at this point and she fancied he played just for her. As she stepped into view the music subtly changed; there was a glimmer of hope dancing among the notes now, delicate threads of possibility and tenderness that wove through the notes. The music warmed her soul as much as her rising blush warmed her cheeks. 

She had to know, she had to ask.

Instead of strolling by him, only slowing long enough to drop a quid in the open case, she stopped directly in front of the busker. He flinched and faltered in his bowing. Slowly the violin and bow were lowered to his sides and he looked at her with a curious tilt of his head. She wondered what colour his eyes were behind those cheap sunglasses. 

He swallowed and nervously cleared his throat and she realised she’d been silently staring for far too long. She offered him the untouched cup of hot chocolate she carried. He appeared to eye it warily as he transferred his bow into the hand that already held his violin. He took it carefully in his dirty long fingered hand. Once the cup was safe in his grip she quickly asked;

“What’s it called?”

She didn’t have to explain, wasn’t sure she could have if she tried.

“It doesn’t have a name yet.”

This amount of conversation appeared to have exhausted him; he sagged a little more into the up turned collar his tatty army great coat as if trying to vanish from her view. She smiled and left him standing alone in the artificial light.

A few days later the violinist vanished. He never did come back to that pitch on her tube station and after a while he became nothing more than a memory in her mind.

 

Years later it was that beautiful haunting melody that reached her and dragged her back to the waking world. There was more to the melody than she remembered; new phrases lifting and dipping, the lifts becoming less frequent and the lows more intense and deeper as the new sections developed.

Molly opened her eyes and saw a violinist. She suffered a momentary disorientation as her fuzzy mind insisted she was standing on the tube station watching the busker from so many years ago. Her senses provided more accurate information; the feel of hospital sheets beneath her; the sting of a cannula in the back of her hand and the smell of antiseptic and she accepted the fact she was in hospital and in hospital as a patient at that. She blinked and realised that the violinist was really in the room with her and she recognized what he was playing. She licked her dry lips and croaked out.

“What’s it called?”

Sherlock stopped playing and span around to face her. Bow and violin were deposited roughly on the uncomfortable armchair as he rushed to her bedside. She noted the tears shining wetly in his eyes and leaving damp trails on his face before the blackness of sleep pulled her under again.

“Molly!”

She spent another nine days in hospital and although violin music haunted her dreams, she never saw Sherlock playing again. He visited frequently, but always in the company of John and Mary, or Lestrade, or Mrs Hudson, even on one occasion with Mycroft. On the day she was released he stood by her bed as John went over her medication with one of the nurses. A sudden sense of now or never came over Molly. She whipped out her hand and grasped Sherlock’s wrist tightly.

“John, could you do that outside please? I need a moment with Sherlock.”

A strange look skimmed across John’s features, before he nodded curtly and ushered the confused nurse from the room, firmly closing the door behind him. Molly took a deep breath and before Sherlock could utter a syllable she leapt headlong into the uncertain;

“We never have to talk about this again, can just leave it in this room and pretend we never spoke of it, but I have to know Sherlock, were you the busker?”

Sherlock’s gaze was transfixed by her fingers wrapped around his wrist, but he nodded his head.

“That piece you were playing when I first woke up, who wrote it?”

His voice was small and she caught a fleeting impression of the grubby busker who had intrigued her years ago.

“I did. Still am.”

Molly wondered if this moment would be left behind in this room when they went back to the lives waiting for them on the other side of the closed door. Chances were high that it would be, so with a braveness she didn’t normally feel went it came to Sherlock and her emotions she plunged onwards.

“I asked you once back then what it was called and you said it didn’t have a name. Does it have one now?”

Sherlock closed his eyes and she could see his throat work as he swallowed. His eyes still shut he nodded.

“Is it called Molly?”

A tear slipped from under his closed eyelid as he nodded again.

“Sherlock look at me.”

His tongue ran slowly over his bottom lip and he raised his head but still didn’t open his eyes. She gently squeezed his wrist and he finally did as she had asked.

“It needs a new happier section, don’t you think?”

For a moment neither of them breathed. In unison they tentatively moved their heads forwards, closing the distance between them, coming together with painful slowness. Just like they always had done thought Molly. 

There was no conscious thought behind her sudden burst of speed. If there had been it might have been expressed as “Sod this! I’m so done with waiting!” Her lips met Sherlock’s faster than she’d anticipated and her heart leapt and whooped with joy as she twigged he’d stepped up a gear as well. 

The only point of connection between them was their lips and her hand still wrapped around his bony wrist. To John, who at that moment risked a peek through the window set in the door, it looked to be the world’s most awkward first kiss and somehow the most passionate and desperate he’d ever witnessed. He turned away and gave the slightly annoyed nurse at his side a cheery smile.

“They need a few minutes. Sorting a few things out, at last.”

He shrugged and cleared his throat as she frowned and tutted at him. She looked even more put out when he planted his feet and stopped her from barging into the room. The nurse stepped back and opened her mouth ready to deliver a tirade, but something in his stance and the look on his face stopped her. She huffed again and stomped away muttering something that sounded like ‘Whatever’, not quite under her breath.

John rolled his shoulders and dropped into parade rest. He’d make sure his friends were uninterrupted for the next twenty minutes and then knock loudly on the door. It wasn’t a lot of time, but if things were going as well as they looked to be they’d have plenty in the future to make up for the dithering of the past.


End file.
